


always borrowed, always you

by stevenstamkos



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Getting Together, Long-Distance Pining :(, M/M, Magical Realism, Miscommunication, Pining, Post-Expansion Draft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:30:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13416120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stevenstamkos/pseuds/stevenstamkos
Summary: you left your heart in one of my boxes, Bill texts.i know, Alex texts back.





	always borrowed, always you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blamefincham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blamefincham/gifts), [mccutiepants (i_am_ammo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_ammo/gifts).



> For Jess and Lily, whose thread on this concept I accidentally stumbled across.
> 
> Title from "I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me" by Fall Out Boy

> _Transcript: Aaron Portzline, Columbus Blue Jackets reporter_
> 
> Charles Mayes: His time on ice has increased significantly with Vegas, but how much do the Jackets miss William Karlsson?
> 
> Aaron Portzline: Dude is on fire. Do the Blue Jackets miss him? They miss him terribly, yes. Nick Foligno isn’t trying to make do at center ice if Wild Bill is here. The loss of Lukas Sedlak isn’t so pronounced if Wild Bill is here. Maybe Alexander Wennberg is happier and healthier if Wild Bill is here. The two were inseparable. The Blue Jackets knew they’d miss him, too, though maybe not this much.
> 
> ["The 'Ask Porty' Mailbag, Vol. 9."](https://theathletic.com/163318/2017/11/22/the-ask-porty-mailbag-vol-9-trading-for-a-center-giving-sergei-bobrovsky-a-break-missing-william-karlsson/)  _The Athletic._

 

 

It’s not until Bill gets to Vegas that he finds Alex’s heart, tucked neatly in one of his cardboard boxes between the dishes and the silverware. This is a very stupid place to put a heart, Bill thinks. There are _forks_ in there, and other sharp things.

He lifts it out carefully, and the heart is hot and beating a steady rhythm in the palm of his hand, smooth and thankfully dry.

(Sometimes they bleed, Bill knows. Broken hearts are messy things.)

He looks around for someplace to put it, but he’s only just started unpacking, and he can’t very well put it in his pocket, can he? In the end, he finds a clean soap dish in one of his opened boxes and puts the heart in there for now, setting the dish on his nightstand where it’s easily within sight. And then he stands there and watches it for a while, wondering what comes next.

Alex’s heart doesn’t do anything. It just beats, same as it does when it’s inside Alex’s chest probably, so Bill goes back to unpacking.

 

 _you left your heart in one of my boxes_ , Bill texts.

 _i know_ , Alex texts back.

Bill bites his lip, fingers hovering over his phone. His own heart is beating madly in his chest, hopeful, unsure if he’s right, if this last year in Columbus was leading to this like he’d hoped. He takes the plunge. _i’ll give you mine when we see each other_.

 _no it’s ok_ , Alex sends back quickly. _i don’t want it_.

Bill sits back in his chair, which creaks a little even though it’s brand new. The breath goes out of him, slowly. Resigned.

Giving someone your heart doesn’t have to be a romantic gesture, he knows. And Alex is the kind of guy who would love his friends deeply and selflessly, the kind of guy who would think it perfectly natural to give his friend his heart once he found out that Bill was leaving. Bill had just hoped—Well, it doesn’t matter. Having Alex’s heart, even as a gesture of friendship and brotherhood, is enough.

It is probably better, he thinks. Vegas is not exactly Columbus.

 

No one expects the Knights to win much in their first season, so they do. They win and win and win, and then it’s a month into the season, and they are still winning, good enough to challenge for the top spot in the Pacific. They are built from scraps and built to win, battling through goalie injuries and the narrative that they’re the leftovers from their former teams.

Bill doesn’t blame the Jackets for leaving him off their list. There just wasn’t room for him on the roster. It was best for everyone, really.

He has a new home here in Vegas, happy and thriving on the ice with his teammates and new colors, and doing just as well off the ice with his nice apartment and his house plants. And Alex’s heart.

He keeps Alex’s heart with him wherever he goes, tucked safely in a box that was made specifically for that purpose. It’s a subtle kind of box, not one of the flashy ones that are popular with people who want to show off the fact that they have someone else’s heart. Bill is not a flashy kind of guy.

And there’s something about having Alex’s heart that feels like a secret. A good kind of secret, but a secret nonetheless.

None of his teammates outright asks him about it, though Flower does bring it up once after a win.

“Lucky charm, eh?” he asks, gesturing to the box with his goalie glove.

The box is in its usual place on the shelf in Bill’s stall, and Bill has to resist the urge to put it out of sight in his bag. It just looks like a box to Flower, probably. He couldn’t know what it’s got inside, little piece of Ohio in the desert.

“Good luck charm, yeah,” Bill says.

He’s not entirely wrong. Hearts are powerful things, and Bill can almost feel it beating through the box whenever he holds the box in his hands, the enormous power of Alex’s heart bleeding through even though Alex himself is thousands of kilometers away.

Bill knows that it’s not luck, really. It’s something close though. It’s strength and love, platonic as it is, and it fills him up, keeps his strides long and his hands quick and his eyes on the back of the net, game after game, win after win.

(It also keeps him standing tall, keeps his chin up and his heart light in the wake of the expansion draft, when Bill’s every thought was pain over the prospect of leaving Columbus—over the prospect of leaving _Alex_.

It’s Alex’s heart. Bill doesn’t know of anything that could give him more strength.)

His teammates must sense that his good luck charm is something private that Bill isn’t willing to share. None of them ever asks him anything else about the box or its contents. They’re good guys like that. Good team like that.

 

In Columbus, Alex is having a bad season. This is not a secret.

Bill is no longer with the Blue Jackets, but he keeps more than an eye on his old team out of some sense of nostalgia and lingering fondness, which is okay because the Jackets are neither a division nor a conference rival. They are so far away.

That might be part of the problem. Bill is so, so far away from Columbus.

Alex is struggling in pretty much every part of his game, and he’s lost his top-line position to the new rookie from Quebec, their—the _Jackets’_ third overall pick in the last draft. He’s lost his position on the power play. There are rumors of injury to start the season, and then he can’t seem to find his groove.

Everyone says not to read team press, and that probably extends to former teams, but the facts are hard for Bill to ignore. Alex is having a bad season in Columbus.

 _are you doing okay?_ Bill texts him, just to check in.

 _yes, i’m fine_ , Alex texts back, in English.

Bill pauses. This isn’t a huge red flag, probably just overthinking, but it’s not like Alex to switch to English when Bill starts a conversation in Swedish. It’s not something they do, not their thing. In Columbus, they both knew how nice it was to have someone to talk to in Swedish.

Then again, Bill is not in Columbus anymore, and things are different.

He sends Alex a string of heart emojis, which transcends language.

Alex does not reply for a few hours, but he does eventually send Bill back a single heart. It’s a big red one, and it even moves on the screen, mimicking a heartbeat.

A week later, the Jackets face the Penguins, and Bill knows—God, Bill _knows_ that it’s going to be an ugly game. It’s Columbus and Pittsburgh. Somebody will probably start a fight, he knows. But it still doesn’t prepare him for the news after the game, trickling out slowly from Columbus: that Alex is hurt, that Alex is going to be out for a while.

The story comes out in bits and pieces, but Bill eventually gets the details: 4-6 weeks, back injury. Placed on IR going into the holiday break.

It is Christmas, a dry Christmas in Vegas.

 

The Knights don’t hold their Christmas party until right around Christmas, but Bill does see the Jackets’ pictures from their mid-December holiday party. He remembers the one at Nick’s last year. Alex wore a blue sweater with a surfing Santa, and he was beautiful even in his ridiculous ugly sweater. Bill wore a green one with a golfing Santa, to match.

They got outrageously drunk, and Bill had climbed into Alex’s lap at the end of the night and stolen his little Christmas hat right off his head. They had also exchanged sweaters at some point, but Bill doesn’t remember when. He just remembers Alex’s smell on him, and the way the gold chain around Alex’s neck had gotten caught on the neckline of his sweater when he pulled it off to give it to Bill. The way Alex had laughed and smoothed down Bill’s messy hair, flyaways charged with static after Bill had fought his way out of his own sweater.

This year, Alex is wearing a green sweater, but Bill has a hard time seeing what the design is. Something with Santa on it, he’s sure. It would be easier to see if there was a clear picture of him, but Alex seems to be hanging back in all the photos, arm thrown around Josh or Murr or Boone. He’s always in the background behind one or two other guys.

It’s not exactly like him, Bill thinks. Alex is not someone who is usually in the background of photos.

And he is smiling, but it’s his practiced smile, his instagram model smile. Bill knows it well. It’s not his real smile, not by a long shot.

Bill thinks about calling him later when Alex gets home from Dubi’s, but. He looks at the pictures some more, swiping through them.

The Blue Jackets’ holiday party. It looks fun, colorful, lots of funny sweaters and drinks and good teammates. There is even a cute joke about their top line with Josh, Panarin, and the rookie: peanut butter, jelly, and bread.

Alex is in Columbus surrounded by people who love him, who will take care of him in ways that Bill can’t.

He leaves a teasing comment on one of the holiday photos, and he doesn’t call.

 

“So, William Karlsson. You’re having a hell of a season.”

“Yeah, we have a really good team here. The boys are great, the fans are great, and we’re all having a lot of fun right now.”

“You just beat the league-leading Tampa Bay Lightning tonight at home. What does that game mean for you, as a benchmark for this team?”

“Well obviously we went out there and played our game, and it’s good to get the two points. They’re a really good team but we just focused on our game. We knew going in that we can’t slack off against that team, and I’m really glad that we didn’t. It means a lot that we can play with the best.”

“Amazing that this expansion team has taken the hockey world by storm. What would you say is the root of your success so far? I mean, the Blue Jackets gave you up for free this summer. Are you playing with a chip on your shoulder?”

“No, I just focus on my game, keep playing the way I do.”

Bill hesitates. It is not against league rules for him to have someone else’s heart; it’s not even frowned upon. The heart isn’t putting the puck in the back of the net for him. But having it with him makes it easier. Why wouldn't it? Having all that love tucked away in his bag, warming him from the inside-out with each beat—Who wouldn’t wake up like every day was a new day?

“My teammates are supporting me right now, and they’re helping me a lot,” he adds. It’s a double-truth, the second half of which no one else will pick up on, but Bill hopes that Alex will. If he’s watching at all.

 

“It’s been a good year,” Bill tells Alex’s heart, when he’s sitting at home over his pre-game meal.

The heart is on the table in front of him, nestled in its box with the lid open. Bill knows that it’s silly to think that it needs room to breathe, but he doesn’t like to keep it in the dark all the time.

“Moving was tough, but you know, Norfolk to Anaheim to Springfield to Columbus. Nothing I haven’t done before, and the guys are great,” he says.

The heart beats, steady, steady, in time with Bill’s breathing.

He chases a piece of asparagus around on his plate before he manages to spear it with his fork. “I’m going out with Oscar and Adam tonight after the game, a little fun for New Year’s. They’re good buddies. And Vegas is really good for parties, you know.”

One breath, two. One beat and then another.

“Wish you were here with me though,” he says and puts the asparagus in his mouth.

Naturally, Alex’s heart doesn’t answer.

The silences don’t stop Bill from talking to it when he’s alone. A little part of him might even believe that whatever he’s saying to it will somehow make its way to Alex in Columbus. It’s a silly thought; everyone knows that hearts don’t work that way. But it’s Alex’s, and Bill can’t stop himself from pouring his heart out to it.

And it’s better than talking to the plants, at least.

 

He scores his first NHL hat trick that night, the first hat trick in Golden Knights history in the last game of 2017.

The Blue Jackets are shut out at home by the Lightning, and Alex keeps his head down in the pressbox, eyes on his phone instead of the ice. Bill can’t see his face when the cameras pan to him during an injury report, but he can read the line of Alex’s shoulders and the pinch in his brows, and Alex’s heart beats slow and steady in his bag.

He wishes Alex a happy new year and puts his phone away.

The next morning, he scrolls through dozens of new year’s texts from friends and family. There is one from Alex, a simple _Gott nytt år!_ with a short string of celebratory emojis attached.

The timestamp reads 12:01 a.m., which was 3:01 a.m. in Columbus.

 

Bill is supposed to be enjoying bye week, and he _is_ , but he sets aside some time in the middle of a beautiful Thursday evening to watch the Jackets play the Sabres. There is sand between his toes and sea salt in his hair and the beginning of a tan on his back, and he digs out an old Jackets snapback and puts it on for the game.

It is not a good game for the Jackets, who lose to the second-worst team in the league.

It is also not a good game for Alex, who takes a hit to his just-healed back and then blocks a shot with his leg, skating to the bench in obvious pain. It is a rough start for his first game back after being activated off IR just yesterday. Bill feels a little sick as he watches Torts bend over Alex before Alex heads down the tunnel.

Bad luck and a bad season for Alex. That has been the storyline out of Columbus.

Bill feels a little guilty, thinking about the great season that he is having in Vegas: the wins, the lack of injuries, the puck loving his stick. It’s not a huge surprise, considering.

Because no matter which way he looks at it, Bill has _two_ hearts, his own in his chest and Alex’s in a box in his bag, carefully tucked away, lending him the strength that used to belong to Alex. And Alex has nothing, a space in his chest where his heart used to be. He doesn’t have anyone else’s, not as far as Bill knows.

Everyone knows what happens when you go too long without a heart in your possession. How your world gets just a bit darker, how it’s harder to pick yourself up and bounce back after tough breaks. No wonder Alex is a mess.

There is a reason that most cases of heart-giving end with the heart being returned to its owner. It’s just too hard to live without one.

The Knights’ bye week ends in two days. They are facing Columbus in two weeks.

 

The heart stays with Bill, safe in his apartment as he spends his weekend showing off his new city to the Jackets, who are thrilled to see him and have somehow gotten ahold of Torts’s credit card.

“He gave it to us,” Nuti says, still in awe. “He just...gave it to us. Said he could trust the team with responsibility.”

It sounds like the kind of crazy that Torts would come up with, so Bill accepts it.

He mostly spends the weekend watching Alex, the easy kind of confidence he gives off whenever he’s in public, none of the frustration or self-doubt that he only lets himself show when he’s alone with Bill. His hands are always relaxed, smile ready whenever someone cracks a joke. He gets caught up in the music and the dancing and the drinking, always effortlessly beautiful.

Bill takes a drink from his glass and watches from across the table.

Alex runs a hand through his hair and then rubs at his stubble, completely missing the smudge of glitter on his cheekbone. Bill spends a few minutes driving himself crazy with wondering how it got there, if it’s from glitter lip gloss or something else. If it’s from someone else.

Next to him, Josh is on his way to truly drunk, and he pulls out his phone to show Alex something, all smiles. Alex leans in, laughs with Josh about whatever is on his phone. They’re pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, Josh with a casual arm thrown around the back of Alex’s seat, just a little too close for just teammates. There is glitter on the bridge of Josh’s nose.

It wasn’t a thing when Bill was in Columbus, but things can change. He wouldn’t have thought that it would be _Josh Anderson_ of all people, but, well.

Things can change.

As Josh is talking, head bent close to Alex’s, Alex looks up suddenly and sees Bill staring.

Bill looks away, searching for something else to focus on, and unexpectedly catches the rookie’s wide eyes.

Dubois is flushed and probably full of illegal liquor, but his eyes dart over to Alex and Josh for a second, and then he looks at Bill again and very barely shakes his head. Bill raises an eyebrow.

The rookie studies him for a long moment. He looks curious, must see Bill as a part of the pre-Dubois Blue Jackets, and then he leans closer, tries to say over the music, “Are you why Wenny’s—” before he’s interrupted by a dancing Cam.

Cam slides into the seat between them, putting an arm around Bill’s shoulder.

“Hey Luc,” Cam greets the rookie, and then he turns to Bill and asks Bill about Vegas and the Knights and how Bill is doing. Bill lets him.

He knows what the rookie was going to ask, anyway. Alex’s season must hang heavy in the Jackets’ dressing room, enough for even the new guys to pick up on it. Bill doesn’t know if his old teammates are aware that Alex doesn’t have a heart. It doesn’t really matter.

 

“Wenny’s pretty sad,” the rookie says while they’re all standing outside waiting for rides.

“Look, I know it’s none of my business,” he continues, rambling a little. “Nick and Bob and Dubi and the others—none of them wanna talk to you about it. I think they don’t want to butt in cause you guys were teammates before and it’s probably awkward and they’re, I don’t know, afraid of upsetting you or something.”

“Oh,” Bill says. He pulls his coat a little tighter around himself.

It’s an unusually cold night in Vegas. Nowhere close to the bitter winters in Columbus, but it reminds him of them just a bit, the cold rolling in from the east just like the Blue Jackets.

Dubois is on a roll now. “And I know that you don’t know me at all, except from training camp last season. But just. Thought you should know.”

“I know.” There is a balled up tissue in Bill’s pocket, and he fidgets with it out of sight. “He’s—Is he okay? Besides the injuries, is Alex...?”

“Yeah, he’s fucking miserable,” Dubois says. “Sorry.” He glances at Alex, who is leaning on Josh, and Dubois’s face when he looks back at Bill is kind of sad. “Whatever you think though, Wenny and Josh aren’t anything. Josh just likes to drunk-cuddle, you know?”

Yeah, Bill remembers. It’s hard to keep things straight in his head when it comes to Alex though.

Dubois looks almost apologetic. “Saw you looking earlier, inside. And I mean, Wenny looked happy to see you when we got here. So.”

Bill is starting to suspect that Dubois is less drunk than he thought. It’s odd, especially for a 19-year-old kid in Vegas for the first time. Maybe he got the partying out of his system during the Jackets’ bye week.

Or maybe he’s just an exceptionally chatty drunk, one who can read Bill frighteningly well.

Maybe Bill is just that obvious.

Another Uber pulls up to the curb, and Josh gets in with Alex and Zach. Dubois hesitates, meeting Bill’s eyes. Bill wonders if there’s more to come, some more Alex-related updates that the rookie wants to get out while he’s got Bill here.

Josh sticks his head out the rolled-down window. “Luc, c’mon,” he calls. “You’ll see Wild Bill at the rink.”

Over Josh’s big shoulder, Bill can see Alex leaning back in the worn-out seat, eyes closed, no easy smile on his lips. He looks peaceful. A sleeping angel, like something a Renaissance artist would paint.

Dubois lets Bill bundle him into the Uber, and he doesn’t say anything else as Bill closes the door and watches the car drive away.

 

 _come over after practice_ , Bill texts.

It is not the smartest idea to have a heart-to-heart the day before an important game when Alex and Bill will be on opposite sides of the ice, but there is so little time. Ever since the expansion draft, every meeting is a counting of the seconds, time ticking down.

Alex answers almost immediately. _okay. address?_

Bill sends it to him, and then he opens the box on the table.

 

Alex stares at the heart in Bill’s cupped hands like he’s never seen it before. Which is a bit of an overreaction in Bill’s opinion, since it is Alex’s own heart that he’s looking at.

“You need to take it back,” Bill says, holding his hands out.

He has not held Alex’s heart in his bare hands since he moved it to its box at the start of training camp. It is out of its box now, hot and pulsing slightly against his palms with each beat. He’s very afraid of dropping it. He knows that it would survive the fall, but just the thought of being so careless with it is horrifying.

Also, it would be very bad manners to drop it in front of Alex.

“You took care of it,” Alex says. He is still staring at his heart, eyes soft.

“Of course I did. But—look at what it’s like living without your heart. You need to take it back—”

“But it’s yours,” Alex says stubbornly. He looks up.

Bill actually checks for a second before remembering that his own heart is still in his chest, though it feels like it’s threatening to beat its way out. “It’s really not,” he says. “This is the one I found in my boxes in September, after we said goodbye in Stockholm.”

Alex rolls his eyes, but there is a faint spot of color rising in his cheeks. “No, I know it was mine. But I mean that it’s _yours_.”

Oh. People do give their hearts to their friends, but they don’t say stuff like—

Bill struggles to keep his breathing even, staring at Alex looking off into the distance like he hadn’t just confessed his love.

God. This is something that Bill has always loved about Alex, his grand and almost painfully romantic gestures. Right now though, it’s not the right call, even though a part of Bill lights up at the words, at the fact that Alex doesn’t regret giving him his heart after all. _No, it’s yours_. After the injuries, the unhappiness, the struggles all throughout one of the worst seasons of his career, Alex doesn’t regret giving away his heart to Bill.

Alex _meant_ for Bill to have his heart, in a way that Bill hasn’t thought about since he first found it when he arrived in Vegas.

But. “You’re practically dying out there,” Bill points out.

Alex finally looks him in the eye and says, like they’re sitting in the car in the parking garage at Nationwide, “Wild Lars.”

God. _God_ , Bill can tell that he’s about to say something endlessly sweet and terribly impractical.

“It doesn’t belong to me anymore.”

“ _Wenny_ ,” Bill says. Alex is _ridiculous_.

“It doesn’t. It’s yours. Has been for a while now.”

This is so very dramatic. Well, they’re sitting in Bill’s kitchen, and it is quiet except for the ticking of a clock on the wall, so it’s less dramatic than it could be with the slightly domestic feel of the place. But Alex has always had a flair for these things.

It is a very dramatic statement, but it still makes Bill pause, letting the conversation really sink in.

The pause is enough for a worried look to cross Alex’s face, suddenly self-conscious. “Unless you don’t want it. I don’t want you to feel pressured to keep it. I know it was unfair to give it to you without talking to you first, but I didn’t want to admit the draft was happening and that you were leaving, and then the summer was over and…”

And this is not what Bill wanted, not at all. He pulls his hands back, holding Alex’s heart closer to his chest, as if shielding it from the absolutely ridiculous thought of him not _wanting_ it.

“It’s not that I don’t want it,” he cuts in, gently.

Alex stops rambling. Bill watches him pick at an imaginary thread on the sleeve of his stylish sweater.

“It’s not about me not wanting it. You’re having a bad season with the injuries and long cold streaks, and I can tell you’re not happy. It’s because your heart is across the country, isn’t it?”

“The hockey’s just something I have to work through,” Alex says. He rubs his face with a hand, uncharacteristic frustration. But that has been his whole season, hasn’t it? “It’s not—It doesn’t have anything to do with giving you my heart.”

“I just think it would be easier for you if you had it back.”

“Bill. It wouldn’t. I don’t know what to do with it.” Alex spreads his hands, shrugs. “What do I do with a heart that wants to be with someone else?”

And Bill has no answer for that.

 

In the end, he doesn’t quite run to the airport right before Alex leaves him again. Bill doesn’t think he’s ever managed to successfully pull off a huge romantic gesture like in the movies, but he does wait until after the game, until he’s had a few hours to think about his huge decision.

It’s not that he’s unsure about what to do. Bill has known what to do since he sat in the kitchen with Alex, listening to the clock tick down, Alex’s heart in his hands. He just needed some time to think about it; he’s never been the type to rush into things without plenty of thought, no matter how sure he is.

After the game, Alex seems okay with going back to his apartment with him. Bill leaves him on the couch for a few minutes, ducking quickly into his room for something.

When he gets back, Alex is checking out the pictures on one of the IKEA tables that Bill doesn’t use for much more than decoration. There are not a lot of photos; most good pictures go on Instagram, but Bill likes to frame the important ones and put them around the apartment. It made Vegas feel more like home, when he first moved here.

“That was a good night,” Alex says, pointing and smiling at one of the pictures. “I didn’t think you would print this one.”

From this angle, Bill can’t see which photo it is, but he can guess. Alex shows up in a few of them: pictures in Columbus, on the road, back home with his gold medal when Alex came to visit after Worlds.

“I look good in this one,” Alex says of a different photo, and Bill can easily imagine the pleased look on his face.

He waits for Alex finish and turn around, which doesn’t take long. There is a smile on his face, and he looks very handsome in his game day suit, standing in Bill’s home. His face falls immediately when he sees what Bill is holding though.

Alex stares at the heart in Bill’s hand, and he’s not smiling anymore when he looks up. “I told you that I don’t want it back.”

“It’s not yours, Wenny. It’s mine. I’m giving it to you.”

If possible, Alex looks even more unhappy at that.

“You need a heart, right? So I want you to take mine.”

Bill’s heart is beating fast, a rapid fluttering in his palm. This feels like yesterday all over again, the two of them in his apartment, a heart in Bill’s hand, held out to Alex.

“I didn’t want you to do that,” Alex sighs. “It’s not the same, if you’re giving it to me just because I’m having a bad season. It’s nice of you, Bill, but I didn’t want you to feel like you’re forced to give me yours.”

God, but Bill loves him so, so much.

“I’m not giving it to you because I feel like I have to, like—like I owe you or something. I want you to have it because it belongs to you, okay? Just like you said yours belongs to me.”

Alex’s eyes are wide and stunned, and then he looks like he’s fighting to keep a grin off his face. “Bill...Jesus, really?”

“For a while, yeah. Since last season. I didn’t know if you felt the same, so—”

There are no words, not in Swedish or in English, that are adequate. Bill has known for a whole day now that he and Alex both—that they both _mean it_ , well and truly, but the wordless happiness is catching him off guard all over again.

“Wait,” Alex breaks in. “You didn’t know what I meant when I gave you my—What did you think it meant when I gave you mine?”

Which is not really the point, Bill knows, but he feels like they should clear some things up. “When I texted you, when I first found your heart and offered you mine and you said that you don’t want it…”

Alex slides down and takes a seat on the floor, back to the wall and covering his face with his hands. It takes Bill a minute to realize he’s laughing.

“Bill,” Alex says. “Wild Lars Billiam. Come here and give me your heart.”

He cradles it in his hands carefully, holding it close to his chest as Bill takes a seat next to him.

It’s good to see Alex happy again. He’s smiling at Bill now, his lopsided smile that—God, it takes Bill back to summers working out together in Stockholm, afternoons spent napping on Alex’s couch and waking up to Alex prodding him awake with that smile on his face.

“I missed you,” Alex says.

“Me too,” Bill says, automatic.

“I didn’t know if you were just offering me your heart because you found mine. Should’ve asked, probably. I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me or anything.” He stares, fascinated, at the heart beating in his hands. “And you were so far away. I didn’t want to bother you about it.”

“Jesus, Alex.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes, letting themselves absorb just how stupid they’ve been for months. More than half the season.

Alex is still holding Bill’s heart, so Bill hands over the empty box he’s been holding in his other hand this whole time. It matches the one upstairs in his bedroom. He watches as Alex carefully slides his heart inside and closes the lid, putting it on the floor next to him.

And then Alex turns back and grins at Bill, crooked and bright, and he reaches up to tuck a strand of hair behind Bill’s ear.

“I didn’t tell you earlier, but I really like that you got the flow back,” he says, quiet.

“I missed having it.”

“Yeah, I was—I mean, the fans were devastated when you cut it. I think they’re glad now that you grew it out.”

“Yes, exactly.”

Alex’s hand is still lingering by Bill’s jaw, fingers tangled in his hair, so it’s easy for Alex to cup Bill’s face and lean in.

 

Columbus is much the same as Bill remembers it. He can still trace the path from his old condo to the rink, hours back and forth in Alex’s car, familiar buildings and street signs. He’s only been gone for less than a year: eleven months, since the Blue Jackets’ playoff hopes ended in the first round in April. He hasn’t been back since.

The city is intimately familiar, just like the dorky smile on Alex’s face, bundled up in his coat even though it’s already March. It is still chilly in Columbus, unlike the swelling heat out west.

It’s good that Alex has been happier and healthier during the second half. The points are coming, and he’s feeling it. He’s been texting Bill more, snapping him cheerful selfies every morning. And after the game in January, he’d posted on Instagram a picture of the two of them, joking in the caption about Vegas stealing his heart, as if Alex hadn’t put it in Bill’s boxes himself.

He looks perfect right now, smile on his face and hands in his pockets, trying to be cool as he walks over.

“That was a good game,” Alex says as a greeting.

“You too,” Bill says, and reaches for him.

They don’t have much time. The Knights are on a plane to Detroit tonight, and Bill doesn’t want to spend these few moments with Alex talking about the game. That’s over: the warm welcome that Nationwide gave him, the lap he took around the ice, the final score.

Right now, it’s just Alex and Bill and their stolen time together, and the hurried kisses that Alex is pressing to Bill’s mouth.

Bill wants to say that they lose track of time, but that wouldn’t be true. They’re both too aware of the time, the seconds ticking down until Bill needs to get on a plane and Alex goes home alone.

He catches Alex’s face when Alex leans in again. “I won’t see you anymore this season.”

Alex studies him, eyes searching his. Whatever he finds there, whatever Alex reads on Bill’s face—“I’ll see you in the finals,” he says, teasing.

It’s too much right now, too much to hope for, too early to hope for it all. A lot can change between March and June. Bill would be making history with the Knights if they make it that far. Bill has already been making history.

But it’s too early to think that far ahead.

He pulls Alex back to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Cam's not even going on the roadie because he's still injured. I love being in denial? Go Jackets. **Edit:** CAM IS ON THE TRIP AFTER ALL but I forgot that like...the Knights were on a roadie the whole weekend 
> 
> Also Luc was not supposed to be in here, nor was Josh, but I guess I'm just that predictable :)


End file.
